ABSTRACT
Africa was the original inspiration of author's interest in the practical uses of cultural theories. Africa's problems, as well as the wave of democratic and free-market reforms now sweeping the world, are bringing the cultural dimensions of development and change to the forefront. One possible reason is that policies, political processes, and management systems interact with cultural variables. Meanwhile, in the backwaters of anthropology and sociology have arisen applied subfields. Cultural change is, understandably, a touchy subject. In the literature the author have found plenty of pronouncements about the importance of respecting culture, but little about when and how to change various aspects of it. "This African way of thinking is synthetic, rather than analytical. Its truths are arrived at by an additive process that makes them ever more complex and multifaceted. The analytical approach, on the other hand, is reductive. It ends up with a partial truth that is easier to explain for its being an approximation.
